Thank you very much.
Mr. Bergeron, I'll put two questions to you, and perhaps we'll have time to hear your answers.
We heard from witnesses earlier—Revenue Watch Institute and other colleagues in your industry—about the Dodd-Frank legislation in the United States requiring companies to disclose payments made to foreign governments. Without getting into the details, obviously there are jurisdictional issues in Canada, constitutional issues about securities regulators, and the devil is always in the details as to how one reports, whether it is a level playing field and so on, and what it means for junior companies. I appreciate that, but as a principle I found it interesting.
We saw some of the confusion—that's the polite way of putting it—that SNC-Lavalin is facing with respect to payments they made or didn't make in Libya. If there were a legislative framework that was level, transparent, and applied in the U.S. to companies trading in the U.S.—and many companies are traded in both jurisdictions—I'm wondering if, in principle, you think there would be merit in that kind of idea, subject, of course, to seeing how it's applied and how it would be implemented.
I was interested in some of the good work your company has done with regard to helping local communities where you have large investments to develop social infrastructure. You said something important, that a partnership between local NGOs, and perhaps government actors as well, is the long-term way to make these investments succeed.
Maybe you could expand on that. I always thought that a company investing a large amount of money in a jurisdiction was questionable. The rule of law is pretty important. If something goes wrong with your lease you want to be able to go to a court and have it enforced. If you have a judicial system that is dysfunctional or corrupt, it's obviously a huge challenge.
Your company won't be training judges or helping to build a judiciary, but perhaps investments or contributions with other partners would help build a courthouse, and then governments could help train those people. It's capacity building. I'm curious how companies as large and successful as yours view that kind of activity from a corporate perspective.